


Fever Break

by Marie_L



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Desperation, Episode: s02e01 Designate This, Explicit Language, F/M, Fisting, Humor, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Sex Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-19 14:28:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7365163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Technically, X5-452 and 494 were under strict orders for the ova extraction: No pregnancy. No sex. But a lot can be wrung from the technical obedience of orders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever Break

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamiflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/gifts).



After three months of interrogations, isolation, and mind-frying in Psy-Ops, faking conversion to Manticore wasn't so bad. It was a means to an end for Max, a strategy, one that she could sense was creeping closer to fruition despite all of Renfro's rolled eyes and sarcastic tests. Not for the first time Max wished Lydecker were still around; she suspected he'd be easier to fool, for the simple reason that their old military commander didn't, in his heart, want to kill his “kids.” This new bitch had no such compunction, would in fact suck every last drop of life from any of her soldiers like a vampire if it advantaged her. Exhibit One: what happened to Tinga.

“Well. Look what we have here. X5-452, cleared by Psy-Ops and supposedly reindoctrinated,” Renfro said, staring Max down inches from her face.

“Yes, ma'am!” Max reflexively barked. At least the slogans were easy.

“Huh. After three weeks of assorted...boarding, three weeks biofeedback, two weeks of sensory deprivation, and God knows how many weeks resisting truth serums and dissociating drugs and narcotics withdrawal, after all that with no breakthrough with your rebellious ass, one short stint with Psy-Ops and suddenly you're an obedient little girl? I'm really supposed to believe that?”

“Yes, ma'am! I'm here to obey orders, ma'am!”

“Mmm-hmm. Who is Eyes Only, then?”

“I never knew, ma'am! Psy-Ops confirmed it, ma'am!”

Renfro took a step back with a dismissive air, and sat down with another smirk creeping up the side of her face. “You know, 452, I just don't believe you. I think you're telling us what we want to know in order to get out of interrogation. But that's neither here nor there right now, because I have an assignment for you that, at the end of the day, doesn't really require your enthusiastic cooperation. Since you foolishly burned down our embryo storage room, we've been short of the raw materials for a new round of good little soldiers. For all your talents, you X5s are still sometimes … fragile. We do need replacements on occasion.”

Standing at attention, Max tried to keep her face motionless, but she still shifted minutely on her feet. More kids growing up in a soulless soldier factory, more death, more wasted horror-filled lives. A part of her fantasized about burning down more than a room of liquid nitrogen tanks, to end it all.

“Fortunately,” Renfro went on, “I have in my possession several squads of vigorous young soldiers to draw raw materials from. I'm told your cohort is the perfect age for egg extraction. Early twenties, nice and healthy. Granted, we don't get genetic upgrades this way, but old-fashioned IVF is certainly easier on the budget than a new round of embryo engineering. And now, 452, your turn for donation is up.”

It took every ounce of strength for Max not to grab this woman and fling her over a table. Renfro sat for a couple of seconds, examining her with that same damned smirk on her face, waiting for any sign of disobedience.

“Now, I've got your file here, and that of your embryo splits. Seems you and your genetic sisters have a little reproductive flaw. Too much feline in the cocktail, apparently? Not even genetically engineered supersoldiers are perfect, but then you knew that. Drop your pants, 452.”

Now Max _did_ blink, although she'd hardly had time to absorb the “genetic sisters” part. “Pants, ma'am?” she managed to spit out.

“Yes, 452, those things covering your shapely legs. Nothing I haven't seen before, come on. You can leave your underwear on.”

Renfro motioned to a silent technician hovering at the door, who scurried over with a small cooler marked BIOHAZARD. He pulled out a pre-loaded syringe with a tiny needle, and without warning bent over and stabbed her in the thigh with it. Again, Max willed herself not to drive her knee straight into his ugly teeth.

“Follicle stimulating hormone,” said Renfro. “And, well, a couple of other things. Also, the lab's analysis indicates that exogenous pheromones would be stimulating for all those nice little follicles, so I've made arrangements for that in your quarters as well. We're going for maximum egg maturation here, so, I'm afraid, this heat's going to suck. Therefore I want to make it clear right from the onset that you are not, under any circumstances, to expose yourself to sexual intercourse. Not unless you want to end up with your very own litter.”

 _No, ma'am,_ thought Max, but she didn't have the heart to agree out loud. What the hell was this about “exogenous hormones”? And _sex?_ Where was this immaculate conception supposed to occur, from her hand? Been there, done that in her heats before. Although admittedly she didn't usually need chemical enhancements to make it suck.

“You understand your orders, 452?”

“Yes, ma'am!”

“Excellent. Take her to ultrasound for the baseline scans.”

Renfro waved over at the guards to escort Max out of her office, as she moved, she swore she saw Renfro grin in delight. Evil. _Bitch._

* * * *

As far as assignments went, X5-494 could think of worse than being stuck on and off for a week in a 5x10 isolation room with one of the filthy runaways. But it wasn't exactly plum pickings either, especially with the “no sex under any circumstances” clause in his orders. Not that he expected much from 452. He'd seen her around a couple of times – the recapture of an oh-niner always triggered peak scuttlebutt – and while she was undoubtedly hot, she also had that suppressed-rage look of those not yet sufficiently beaten down by Reformatting and Psy-Ops. Plus they'd been doing these ovarian stimulations for a couple of months on most of the female soldiers as they came off assignment, and to a man they reported being bloated, nauseous, exhausted, and generally unwilling to engage in interassignment recreational time, even when precious condoms could be scrounged up.

494 had been given no clues this case would be any different. Actually, he hadn't been given any clues at all as to what his purpose in this tiny room was. Just take off your shirt and sit in there, they'd ordered, twelve hours on and twelve hours off, and keep your dick in your pants. He considered that maybe he was supposed to keep an eye on a rebellious soldier against self-harm, but rejected it; Manticore could and would strap 452 down to a table for a week if they thought that was a risk.

The door clinked open and they shoved 452 into the cell. She didn't yet looking bloated, nauseous, or exhausted, just had her normal pretty-scowl on, until she saw him sitting there cross-legged on the room's single bunk.

“Ben,” she said, her face dropping like a stone.

“Who?” he replied. “Don't look overjoyed to get out of isolation for once.”

“Someone I used to know,” she muttered.

“Oh, you must mean your runaway friend, 493. I'm 494.” That came out way more bitter than he intended, so he covered it up with a shrug. Of course all those damned escapees knew each other. “Heard they finally brought him in a few months ago. Can't say I'm sorry, now he won't be continually messing up _my_ life.”

“He didn't even know you existed, and now he's dead,” shot back 452.

“Ignorance of the regs is no excuse, 452. If your group had thought for even five seconds, you'd have realized what they would do to us left behind.”

“Max,” she said, face blank again. “My name is Max, not 452.” She marched forward the few steps next to the bed, and unceremoniously grabbed the sheets to pull out from under him. “Off my bed and get out, now. Gonna need to at least try and sleep before the inevitable wall-scratching starts.”

“Can't. I'm stuck in here with Miss Mopey good and proper.” At her glare, he added, “Hey, this isn't my idea of fun assignment either, but orders are orders.”

“Your orders are to sit in here with me, with your shirt off?”

She was eying him with a look of dawning recognition, but didn't volunteer any information of her own, which annoyed him more than it should. Like every other surviving soldier he was used to being out of the loop with their ever-oscillating roster of commanders, but with fellow X5s there was a code, to quietly share relevant intel unless directly contravened. They'd all learned long ago that this lowered the odds of inadvertent fuckup, and thus worse fates than Psy-Ops.

“Yeah,” 494 finally responded. “Care to shed some light on mission parameters?” He said it with all the deliberate sarcasm of talking down to a kid X8.

“Nothing. Renfro's just looking to extra-torture me.” She flopped on the bed, and literally kicked him to the edge, as if bare skin contact were contaminating or something. To _her._ “You. Off. Mission parameters are to stay as far away from me as possible. You get that corner, I get the bed.”

“Whatever, oh-niner. Didn't want to engage in recreational time with you anyway.”

He slid off the edge of the mattress, before she decided to put some force into the kicks. The corner in question, though, was cold, hard and smelled faintly of bleach. 494 had endured far worse, but still, the fact that she was basically exiling him even with zero aggression on his part was, again, irritating. “Can I at least have a pillow?”

“Would you pleeeeease shut up,” she said, but threw the pillow at his head before she had a chance to drool on it. She balled up the thin blanket in her hands and curled it over the top of her head. “Please.”

“Hey, there's the politeness you outsiders are famous for. You know, we're going to be stuck in here awhile, and it's only oh-ten-hundred hours. Good luck on the sleep. You could, you know, talk, 452.

“I _said_ my name is Max,” she said, muffled through the blanket.

“Tell that to your barcode, _Max.”_

She twisted her body to look at him, eight feet away and curled up half-naked on the floor. “You need a name too, since we're forced to share the same air. Anybody ever give you a name before?”

“No, we just go around broadcasting our top secret military designations to every homeless civvie in the streets. Sure there have been names.”

“I meant, here. Your unit. A stretch, I know, but your friends. Something that rolls off the tongue better than '494'.”

“I happen to think 494 is an awesome designation. Bit more rounded than 493, less clunky than all those annoying 500s.”

Max rolled her eyes and turned back to the wall, but then came back with, “I'm gonna call you Alec. As in smart-alec.”

“Whatever makes you happy, sister.”

In truth, counting training simulations there had been many names, so many that they blurred together into a jumble of syllables, in contrast to the crisp clean constant numbers. He knew he'd had a unit nickname as a child, but that was half his life and three rounds of brain-toasting ago, and whatever it had been was buried in the detritus of 494's fractured memory. Another designation for another meaningless mission? He didn't mind.

  


* * * * *

  


Hours later, they dragged Alec off for whatever and Max off for more shots, another ultrasound of her private bits, and five minutes in the canteen to scarf down whatever calories she could. Her personal guards, now swapped out to female X4s, had snorted when she suggested a shower might be beneficial. Renfro was determined to remove everything that could make a heat bearable, a mission easily accomplished. Surprisingly, when she was returned to her cell at 023 hundred, Alec still wasn't there.

She picked up Alec's pillow – on which she could already identify his scent, _fuck –_ and rolled under the covers on top of the thin mattress, determined to will sleep into existence. Sometimes it worked; sometimes she dreamed away chunks of a heat cycle on imaginary thrusting and fucking, thus sparing her the embarrassment of acting it all out in real life. But not this time.

After two hours of futility Max got up and paced the room exactly like the caged animal she felt like she was. The heat period was coming on already thanks to whatever hormonal poison was in the shots, viscerally felt rather than with conscious signals. More wetness, more of a sense of smell, that state of hyperalertness that due to its constantly shifting targets ended up as distraction. Her breasts ached a bit, which was unusual; the clit throbbing hadn't begun yet. Under normal circumstances Max did whatever it took to keep her mind from obsessively cataloging her physical symptoms, but it was impossible with nothing in this damn blank cell.

In the morning she heard the tapping of the guards as they brought Alec back, and long before they shoved him back into the cell she could detect his characteristic hormones – scentless, but no less present – along with the faint odor of utilitarian soap. _He_ got to shower, apparently; Renfro must be aware that whatever _essence de vie_ set her off wouldn't wash off for long. Max wrapped her arms around her bent knees and buried her face in her lap in an effort to ignore him. Maybe if she refused to look up, none of the torturous rest would follow.

Alec shuffled in, and then the sound of his footfalls stopped one step inside the door. She could hear his breathing suddenly quicken as he evaluated the sit-op. Ah, smart-ass boy was finally figuring it out. She should have known that just as much as her physiology was fucked up, another X5's response to it would be...enhanced.

“What the hell is this, Maxie?” he said. The endearment – like they were friends? -- pinged her annoyance meter, before she dismissed it as an improvement over the hated _452._ “Are you a nomalie or something?”

Nomalies, the projects gone wrong or gone bad, monsters in the basement. Maybe Alec wasn't so different from Ben as he thought. “Or something,” Max said into her knees. “Getting the impression that the other girls around here don't have a dash of feline rut every few months. Lucky me.”

“Yeah. That would be… notable, yeah. Word would get around.”

Her knockout hormonal freakishness had rendered him inarticulate, great. She heard Alec take a step forward, and Max's head jerked up.

“Don't touch me!” she snapped. “If you come any closer, I swear I will smash vital parts.”

“Hey now, you're the sex-starved one,” he retorted. “I just want my pillow.”

Even as Max threw the thing across the room at him, she looked at him. Noticed him for the first time with her newly horndog goggles, which revealed that contrary to her pissy-fogged impression of the previous day, Alec was _hot._ Wiry but perfectly proportioned to Max besotted tastes, smoothly athletic, blessed with one of Manticore famously beautiful faces, including a mouth that promised to lick and suck all the way down to...

She slammed her head back onto her knees with a frustrated growl. This next phase of the heat was a familiar one, the thing she most loathed about it. Simple horniness she could deal with by herself, but the fucking _attraction_ to anything with a functioning cock was what drove her up a humiliated wall _._ A betrayal by her own mind, as far as Max was concerned. Guys who in normal life she'd squash under her platform boots suddenly seemed irresistible, charming, and charmingly fuckable. Young or old, chiseled jaw or weak-faced dough boys, nice guy or asshole – nothing mattered, her traitorous hormone-soaked brain would contemplate jumping it. And truth be told, when she finally gave in, it was usually with the young, pretty, slutty ones. Enthusiasm and stamina counted for a lot when you're trying to coax marathon boners out of an ordinary.

The thought came up unbidden that a fellow X5 probably wouldn't be deficient in the stamina department. She licked her lips. _Fuck,_ not the time to compare biology notes.

She heard Alec slide down the wall in precisely the same location as yesterday. Cracking her eyes open, but not letting go of the tight grip around her knees, she saw he was sitting in a mirror reflection of her own position, the pillow hugged to his bare chest like a woobie blanket. He was watching her with a neutral expression, neither predatory or concerned. Mac wondered if part of his orders were to spy on her and report her misery back.

After a few minutes of silence, he said, “What's your plan here, Max? 'Cause I'd kinda like to know what I'm in for, if you don't mind.”

 _Plan?_ Like she could think while daydreaming of running over there and ripping his pants off? 330 milliseconds, that's how long it would take to get across the room. “My plan's for me to sit here curled up in a ball feeling like shit, and you to stay over there and try not to make me feel any worse,” Max said. “In other words, embrace the suck, soldier. It's only four or five days until the egg popping begins. I've been nailed into a coffin box longer than that, and I bet you have too.”

“Sit and wait for whatever? Now there's a shitty plan. Seriously, Max, in the space of twelve hours you've degenerated into a quivering heap and are putting off some kind of chemically...” He cut off and glanced away for a second. “What if you roid out two days in, is what I'm saying. I'm the one dangled in here like a piece of meat with the revved-up girl, and I have no idea what you oh-niners get up to for fun.”

Was he... _rattled_ by her? Alec didn't seem to be the nervous type, more pragmatic through the sarcasm laser shots than anything. She was thinking of the situation from the perspective of the outside, Max realized. Out in the world of the ordinaries men routinely underestimated her, a fact she just as routinely took advantage of. Alec, though, grew up with the reality of having his ass kicked as often from the X5 females as the males. He was instinctively aware that they had designed them all with similar capabilities, and while he might have a slight size advantage she was tad bit quicker, and they both could beat each other to a pulp with equal ease. In a scenario of mutually assured destruction, it was good to put your weapons on the table.

“Not going to freak out, so you can put your cattle prod away, okay? It's just, my self-control may waver, so I need to set a hard line now. You get it?”

“No,” he answered flatly. “A better plan would be to let me help you, and work it out while you still can. If a member of your unit got shot, would you stand around and hope for it to heal? Hell no, dig that bullet out. Nothing wrong with a little first aid in the field.”

“This isn't a bandaid on a boo-boo, it's sex,” Max shot back.

“So?” Alec said, and now he sounded genuinely baffled. “It's just a mission, one more mission to tackle and get through and survive for the next one. It shouldn't mean anything.”

Which, in a phrase, summed up everything she hated about the heats, her genetically designed weapon of a body, and everything about goddamned Manticore. Why did everything, even sex, have to be all depressing gray and utilitarian and lifeless orders? Why were they forced to use each other, as if they were biological machines instead of people? Manticore was at heart a bunch of scientists fiddling with the very fundamentals of life, and yet all of their work was broken and inhuman.

But Max wasn't about to get philosophical with a shirtless guy who probably had no concept of affection or love. “Gee, you really know how to sweet-talk a girl,” was all she said. Lame, but as Max watched him curled up on the floor, arguing, eyes dilated from hormone saturation, she felt her resistance weakening. Max needed to keep talking, keep Alec talking, for the distraction.

As expected, Alec rolled his eyes. “You don't want me to be nice to you. That's not my purpose here,” he snapped. “Why are you torturing yourself instead of getting a little bit of enjoyment out of the situation? Some fucked up code of morality the ordinaries taught you? Sex is fun, Max. You know how much sanctioned fun there is around here? None, that's how much. I thought going against the rules was your thing.”

He stood up and dropped the pillow, and slowly walked towards her, stopped only a foot in front of her at the edge of the bed. Max's anger flashed up, but she knew if took a swing at him, if physical contact was made, she was going to lose it.

“If you really don't want me to touch you, I won't,” Alec said, as if reading her mind. “But come on, be honest with yourself about what you want, and whether it's really that bad. Or, as an alternative, you can sit here and jerk off to relief and send me back to my corner to do the same, I don't care. Just stop with the martyrdom complex, like you can do nothing about the situation.”

“It's not _me,_ that's problem,” Max hissed. “It's pheromones and artificial hormones and my whacked out body, not me.”

Alec sat down next to her on the bed, inches out of touching range. She could feel his body heat rolling off him, at a rate that would be feverish in an ordinary but was normal for them. Every guy she'd ever been with had been cool to the touch, as if to emphasize that they weren't and never would be the same as her. Now she wanted to wrap her arms around him and envelop that warmth, identical to her own.

“You get the seizures?” Alec suddenly said. It seemed apropos of nothing.

“Yeah,” Max said. “I figure they probably learned to fix it by now, by feeding you all high tryptophan food or something. No issues since I got here.” She let herself unclench a tiny bit, since they were getting all conversational.

“Yes and yes, and sometimes there's supplements too. But the interesting thing is, sometimes there's no supplements. Sometimes, if you're not performing right, they withhold everything until you have a full grand mal. And then it's like your brain reboots, and afterward you can suddenly do things you couldn't before. You see the world differently, and it allows you to approach problems in a brand new way.”

“Ahh, a heartwarming example of Manticore parenting,” said Max.

Alec waved a dismissive hand, as if seizures were a minor consideration. “You're missing the point. We're all fucked up in some way, and if you want to survive you've got to learn to make a knife out of a rock. You think those guys in white lab coats could predict every last thing when they were slicing together our genes? Because they didn't. I know one guy over in Building Three who has some kind of mineral deficiency, and secretly eats dirt. I know this one girl who, after she fucks someone, likes to pick at her partner's hair. 'Feels nice to groom,' she says. Every X5 in this place has a little bit of nomalie in them.”

“Oh yeah?” Max leaned closer, inching in on his warmth. “What's your bit, besides being a blabbermouth?”

“Fuck-all if I can listen to orders.” Despite promising not to touch her, he leaned in for a kiss. It seared across Max's lips, and at that exact instant she abandoned her last tendrils of restraint. _Why not, why not, he's letting you use him,_ rolled in the back in what was left of her mind. She'd beat herself up over it in a few days, but right now eighty percent of her brain capacity was taken up with _fill cunt rub clit taste skin get off off off..._

Max shot back up to a sitting position, pawing at his hair and face. Alec rolled with it, she dimly noted. He was touchy-feely too, dragging his hands over her body as he slipped under her shirt and flipped it over her head. He hardly paused with the kissing, but then Max broke it off to trail down his neck and chest, reveling in the warmth and his scent emanating off his body. She unbuckled her regulation trousers and kicked that and her underwear off. But when she felt Alec wriggling next to her to do the same, she batted his hands away.

“No. Pants stay on.” As if to emphasize, she rolled on top of him and pinned his wrists down on both sides. His trousers didn't stop her from rocking hard against the bulge underneath the fabric, and they both groaned.

“Whaaa…?” Alec said, blinking at the shift in position and sudden loss of kissing. “But you said...”

She pushed herself back up sitting while still lightly holding down his hands, and willed her last bits of logic into her fogged brain. “You offered to help me, but no fucking way is this turning into a baby-making excursion. Renfro would probably leave me knocked up with octuplets just for spite. I don't care how far gone I get, _no._ No spermalicious cocks anywhere near the important areas. Not unless some newfangled form of male birth control has been invented.”

“Actually, we used to have some.”

Now it was Max's turn to blink in surprise, as she considered the regretful lost possibilities. Alec nodded his head in exaggerated _uh-huh,_ and pulled loose one of his hands to run his fingers over her lips. “Females had these hormone implants in their arms, males this polymer gel stuff they injected into our dicks.”

Max recoiled even further up. “Ugh. I don't need to know the nasty details.”

“Whatever, Ms. Sensitive. Bottom line, we were all shooting blanks. You might have noticed Manticore's a little touchy about its genetic property getting out. Wouldn't want to accidentally implant a supersoldier in some hapless civvie. But then somebody – not going to name names – blew up all the embryos, and they took out the implants for those not actively in the field. So thanks, 452, thanks for that. Everybody was totally down with casual stress-relief sex until you came along, and now we're all stuck in this IVF breeding hell zone. Thinking ahead for your fellow X5s, yet again.”

Even as he was excoriating her, Max bent down to suck on his chest again, working her way down to his nipples as Alec squirmed. The main thing she got from all that: _blah blah_ _fertile sperm_ _._ Really a shame, but Alec still had other attributes to help her out. It was too much to bear, lying in bed with a perfectly serviceable male body who had been shown ready and eager to give her exactly what she craved. Max lifted a leg over his and dragged his hand down between them.

“Stop talking now, pleeeeease. Stress-relief sex? It doesn't have to mean anything? Prove you're not just running your mouth off, soldier, and do something better with it.”

Alec grinned as he pushed her off his chest. Max fluidly cooperated and rolled onto her back, legs wide, even as she guided his hand to go deeper. He eased a bunch of fingers in – she didn't care how many – and Max arched her hips to encourage more. Alec licked her belly and inside of her thighs as he scooted down, positioning himself between her legs. She grabbed his hair, first to shove his face down further, but only a couple of licks in changed her mind and pulled him back up a few inches. Alec groaned in frustration, like he _needed_ to taste her, but settled back for the sweat on her abdomen.

“More inside,” she moaned. It wasn't the clit she needed, that could blow any time without much assistance, and probably would over and over. What Max really wanted – what led to the periodic rough marathon sex that marked the heat cycles – was to be stretched and filled and sometimes pummeled from the inside. It never hurt no matter how far over the edge she went, and she never came harder than being massively fucked out with a huge cock inside her.

Alec somehow sensed she was no shirking violet, or maybe knew it from other X5s. Max certainly didn't care. He pushed into her about as far as fingers had ever gone, and when she rocked for more, added in that fateful fifth finger.

“Maybe want to stop wiggling for a minute?” he said with a muffled voice into her legs, but for once there was no snark in it. He eased in and out slowly, too slowly for her tastes of even a few seconds before.

“God, don't wimp out on me now,” Max breathed. “More, I'll go over with more, keep going...”

He pushed all the way inside her, and simultaneously dipped lower to suckle on her clit.

Somewhere in her brain, when Max came screaming around his hand, she hoped that would be enough satiate the impulsive animal within. But that same cynical beast in her knew, the two of them could take much much more.

* * * * *

Ten strenuous wrist-snapping hours later, some X4s came to retrieve 494 from the sex-saturated cell. The two of them had the presence of mind to throw on clothes before the guards came, but 494 doubted that was fooling anyone, even assuming there was no hidden camera in the room just for the Facility Commander's secret pleasure. They were taking the mightily disheveled 452 away too, and would presumably confirm that no intercourse had taken place, although holy shit was she loosened up for that ultrasound wand. Technically he wasn't in abeyance of orders, but it was a thin thread to be hanging from.

In truth, 494 still didn't understand why he had crumbled so quickly. One second he was good, if a bit aroused even while sitting on the cold floor, and the next second he couldn't resist ripping her clothes off. He'd even _argued_ with 452 to disobey orders, not that it took much effort to convince her that foreign appendages really belonged up the wazoo. The apparent loss of operational control terrified him, so 494 deliberately stumbled down the hall in the slowest manner possible, to gather his brains back about him before being thrown back into his own isolated quarters.

The problem was, no way were they going to make it another four days. In the space of only one 452 had degenerated from standard-issue bitchy into pretty much a genetically-enhanced fuck receptacle, and Medical wasn't even done shooting her up with hormones yet. Like _he_ was going to hold out under those conditions? Already he'd hit his limits, both as far as accessory limbs went and his own monumental frustration. And yet 494 was equally sure if he left her implanted with an unauthorized junior cadet or five, Max would make the effort to hunt him down and rip off his balls, just to ensure it never happened again.

Obvious solution was obvious: Condoms. But they were in appallingly short supply around base given the birth control situation, and it wasn't like 494 could run out to the local town for more. Sometimes the ordinary guards brought them in at extortionist barter prices, although more often now the X5 themselves smuggled them back when returning from missions, and distributed them out to the female soldiers who had the most to lose from accidental preg…

494 stopped cold in the hallway. His X4 chaperone glared at him with the sudden loss of cooperation.

“We gotta stop by Block F on the way home, m'kay?” He didn't really present it as a request, and although the X4 scowled harder she reflexively went along. That was one of the problems with instilling a genetic predisposition to obedience in your soldiers, they were unconsciously weak in the face of anyone who sounded authoritative. Secretly 494 thought this was a flaw in all of the other X-series but the fives, but hey, it was what Manticore demanded. What good were troops who could run away and disobey orders? It was the unceasing contradiction of their lives: they were required obey at all costs, but successful performance of duty still required human intelligence. Some of those X8 kids barely seemed to be able to get a spoon into their mouths unsupervised.

Not that any of it was 494's problem.

Block F currently contained someone who wasn't exactly a friend – 494 wasn't sure he had any of those – but at least she was one of his more familiar acquaintances. X5-735 had been assigned to his unit at time of the oh-niner escape, and was also one of the other clones of said traitors who had been forced into reindoctrination. As a result he and 735 had spent plenty of time together, although her memory of those early days was almost as shot as his. The last 494 had heard her wayward genetic sister had been captured and successfully Reformatted, thus propelling 735 up the ranks of trustworthiness. She'd only returned from the field a week ago, and 494 knew for a fact that she wouldn't have any personal interest in using contraband rubbers.

They stopped outside her door and 494 tapped on it. “Hey. 735. Question,” he whispered. Despite trying to keep it quiet, three other nearby blockmates appeared at the tiny barred windows in their cells. Not a lot of entertainment at 22:15.

735's hand emerged casually between her window bars, and she wrinkled her nose as she gazed out into the hallway at him. _“Jesus,_ 494, you smell like you just crawled out from inside a ripe vagina. Ever heard of a shower?”

494 waved a hand at his own malodorous body. “Needed to talk before lockdown,” he said, jerking his head towards the X4 babysitter standing impatiently a couple of meters away. “Operation Mafu in progress.”

Mafu was universal X5 code for _Manticore_ _f_ _uckery,_ i.e. any assignment that was nonsensical or stupid and posed significant risk to life and limb. 735 nodded with mild sympathy. They'd all been there.

“You just got back from that DC job, right?” She shrugged, which 494 took as confirmation. “Bring back any contraband protection?”

Here 735 leaned into her window with an amused expression on her face, and for the first time 494 noticed she wasn't wearing regulation nighttime gear. “Dude, I got back six days ago. That stuff's long been distributed to those girls who, inexplicably and despite all adverse health warnings, still want to stick a cock in it. Gotta be a little quicker on the upkeep.” Behind her 494 heard a feminine laugh, and for a second he was distracted by the admirable coup of arranging rec time in her quarters after hours.

“Seriously, how is your off-duty horniness a mafu?” 735 continued. “I'm currently enjoying the good graces of command for a job well done, so buzz off.”

“You don't understand,” 494 hissed. “I've been assigned to co-domicile with this girl who's turned into, like, a sex-obsessed animal. And she's putting off these hormones, and we're under 'no preggo' code red orders, so now I'm...” He trailed off, hoping that was a pathetic enough plea.

“..up shit's creek with your dick, I get the picture. You mean it's an I'm-fertile-fuck-me heat? Like a cat? Haven't heard of that nomalie since...” She crooked her head, and then tried to hold back her own laugh. “It's 452, isn't it? The Commander's toying with her, and threw you into it too.”

“You got to help me,” pleaded 494. “I'm running out of ideas, and I've only got eleven hours before they toss me back in there.”

“Hey, look on the bright side, at least she's hot. You know there are sexual activities that _don't_ involve the all-important cock, right?”

“I've tried it! Hands, tongue, everything but my goddamned foot. Please, you've got to know something.”

735 glanced back behind her, evidently impatient to get rid of him. “Fine. I may have heard talk that that guard from Tacoma, Kirkby, has been bringing in contraband every week. Not on duty until day after tomorrow, though.”

494 collapsed off to one side of the door, not sure if he should be relieved or maddened. Two more _day_ _s_ _?_ Tough mission.

735 sighed at him, and moved away from the door to rummage through her belongings. “I'm taking pity on you, 494, so you'll go away,” she said a few seconds later.

She held out a long mound of glass, which was thick enough it barely made it through the bars. He grabbed the contraption and stuffed it down into his pants to hide it from view, to her evident displeasure.

“That thing had better be fucking _sterile_ when you give it back, is all I can say.”

He glanced up and grinned in appreciation. “You got a vibrator in there too?”

“Fuck offfff, nobody gets my vibrator but me.”

494 laughed, and left her to her recreation time in peace.

* * * * *

After Alec stumbled off in a fugue and Max endured another round of injections, her body mercifully let her sleep. Under normal conditions Max's head hardly hit the pillow at all, but heats were different; she often fell under a sex-drenched dream state, as if her body needed to rejuvenate and prepare itself for another round all at the same time. Of course, normally the heat would be done by now, especially after hours of… well, not exactly fucking, but close. This time around all that vigorous activity wasn't enough to break the heat, which she guessed would only happen once that eggs burst forth like a little microscopic aliens crawling out of their nest. At least another two days, the bored techs had informed her.

Max was glad Alec was gone, but to her aghast she also missed him. Glad because without his pheromones co-mingling with her own she could take a well-deserved breather and lull herself unconscious. But it was unnerving how reliant her body already was on him, how much she craved his skin and lips and fingers and scent. _Neediness,_ ugh, there was nothing that Max fucking hated more. Plus her hormone-riddled brain had forgotten all about the fact that Alec looked exactly like Ben approximately four minutes in, so there was another thing to beat herself up over. At this point she didn't even have the mental energy to feel decently guilty.

She managed six hours of eerie erotic dreams before sleep abandoned her entirely. Then Max had nothing to do but pace the cell and listen with her hypersensitive ears to the wandering guards. In the back of her fogged mind she'd noticed something slightly off about the X4s assigned to her wing, compared to standard-grade military ordinaries. They were slow somehow, mentally not physically, unable to shift from assigned tasks or respond to unexpected circumstances like the X5s could, even with an equivalent lifetime of imprisonment. Probably why they were assigned to low-level guard duty, while soldiers like Alec – who clearly could switch gears in spades when it served his interests – were sent out on complex missions.

The guards became something to focus on, take the heat – ha! – off her ridiculous bodily urges. Count the footfalls, observe morning activities and drills, catalog patterns. There was something wrong or imperfect, something under the surface nagging at her…

And then Max caught the unmistakable whiff of an X4 leading Alec back to her, and all thoughts of the guards were tossed out the window.

She practically tackled him upon entry, nearly knocking down the retreating X4. Alec's back collided with the door as it slammed shut, as she mauled his face. Max leaned in so as many square inches of her skin as possible were lined up with his.

Dimly she noted something was weird in his pants. Not even under out-of-their-mind heat status was anybody _that_ hard.

“Not condoms in there, I take it?” she asked into his ear, taking a small breather. Well, a breather into his neck.

“Yeah, no luck on that front,” Alec said, with a forlorn sigh. “You screwed the pooch on the birth control status, 452. Sorry, uh, Max,” he added at her glare. “But I still brought a generous donation from the female half of the rank and file.”

He pulled out the glass mound in triumph, and Max didn't know whether to be appalled or amazed. “You can get a _dildo_ on this base, but not a damn rubber? The post-Pulse economy really has caught up with Manticore.”

“Hey,” he said, waving it around, “don't want it, don't have to use it. You have your corner, I have my corner. But my wrist was getting a little too overextended a workout yesterday.”

It was quite literally the _least_ romantic thing anyone had ever done for her. _I can't keep up with fucking you, animal-girl, so here, have a phallic thing to help us both out._ However, he had made an effort. And frankly, her aching nether regions didn't really care for niceties, either. Despite the abuse of the previous day, her entire body craved more.

As if to demonstrate that fact, Alec reached down with his free hand and snaked it into her loosened pants, and landed two fingers right on her clit. “You seem a little more chilled out to start this morning, Max,” he murmured. “We don't have to warm up with this 'wah wah I feel guilty' every day, right? Let it go, and do what feels good. It's not like either one of us has anywhere else to be.”

“Alec. Did I ever tell you you've gotta learn when to stop talking? Stop talking.”

She shed her clothes – which were so nasty anyway by this point, she may as well never put them on again – and pulled him down on top of her. Without bothering to wait for him, she grabbed the dildo and slowly pushed it in herself, and the cool fullness of the glass pressing on all sides of her cunt was _magnificent._

“You make me come with this thing inside me, I'll let the pants off for some reciprocal action. If you promise to keep it away from the overly fertile zone,” Max gritted out.

Alec moaned into her chest, and kissed his way downwards.

* * * * *

There was something wrong with him, 494 was beginning to worry. Never before in a sexual situation had he been aroused so long and with such aching ferocity. Even on the rare occasions when getting caught wasn't an issue and the sex could in theory be leisurely, 494 had historically experienced it as a fast release of tension. But after three days shut away with Max, the long hours of intensity crept up on him, even though he wasn't the one in heat. He didn't think he'd touched anyone for that long, ever. Growing up at Manticore, touch meant exercises or fighting or medical procedures, always something with pain. No wonder when they grew up and found out about the wonders of sex, all most of them could think of to do with it was quickies.

Although a fragment of a memory came to him, after Max unexpectedly full asleep. None of the X5s slept much, so it was surprise to see her roll over on top of his chest with apparent exhaustion at a mere 21:30. Victory at wearing her out, _finally._ As he lay on her tiny bunk, stroking her silky back, the memory floated up unbidden. Another kid from his unit, before oh-nine, crawled into bed with him. It wasn't sexual, and they didn't do anything but lay there holding each other for a few dark-awake hours until right before the lights flicked on. It was just nice to fake sleep with someone else. 494 didn't know where the memory had come up from, or why it was still rattling in his brain when most everything else had been lost. Maybe the kids in his unit did that all the time, and he had forgotten.

The problem was, now he was an adult, and all that touching did automatically turn into something else. Now it was like her hormones were following him everywhere, so when they took him away for his daily mess hall/hygiene/rest break, he _still_ was up for it with increasing desperation. Max had gone down on him a few times, a fact for which he was grateful, but in Heat-Induced Boner Syndrome the relief didn't last long. Was a little true fucking too much to ask of the universe? Maybe he could track down some kind of lube-like substance and ask for some back door action after she assaulted him tomorrow?

Or, better yet, just get some damn condoms.

His X4 wasn't keeping a close eye on him, so 494 darted out of the canteen at superspeed when her attention was turned. There was a risk she might throw up the alarm right away, but odds were she'd hunt for him first to avoid looking like she failed in her simple mission. 494 figured he had about ten minutes before the cavalry came charging at him. Fortunately, he knew where he was going.

The guard Kirkby was assigned to the camera room over in E wing, overlooking the X7 group bunkers. 494 burst in, and glared at the other ordinaries on duty.

“Can we get a minute?” he said, nodding to Kirkby. “Business arrangement. I'll make it worth all your whiles.”

One of the other guards shrugged and said, “Two minutes,” and they filed out.

“I don't have any business arrangement with yo...” Kirkby started, but before he could finish the thought, 494 zapped over to rummage through his workbag. “Hey! Look, asshole, pay for that shit in favors like everybody else. Plus haven't you freaks been reserving those for the ladies?”

“Trust me, a lady is involved,” 494 retorted. “And this is emergency provisioning, so, sorry? Unless you want to report how you've been smuggling in contraband for weeks now, I suggest you keep your mouth shut.”

He found a strip of condoms buried in the bag, and emerged triumphant. The pissed-off guard would be a problem for him in the future, which was a real risk to some of 494's other operations, but right now he couldn't care less. _Mission absofuckin'lutely accomplished._

  


* * * * *

  


This time Max didn't even try to sleep when they shoved back into the dank isolation room. To hell the ultrasound results, she could tell the heat was breaking. Hey, maybe epic almost-fucking with a fellow X5 _did_ do a body good. Note filed for the future. Right now, though, all that excessive orgasming had left her buzzed and alert. Enough of the edge had been taken off the heat that she could microconcentrate on the world outside the cell, out of reach but not out of sensory range. She lay down on the cool hard floor, skin to cement to give her body a focal point, and stared up at the ceiling while she listened.

An hour later, Max found the flaw. Now all she had to do was wait for her next opportunity.

On some level Max wished she could say that the impending egg extraction had nothing to do with her motivation to bust out, that she'd be just a gung-ho to go home without that sword hanging over her head. In truth, though, it did provide a push. Max might not be able to stop all of Manitcore's devilish experiments, but they could do it without _her_ kids, even if she was a parent by genes only. Max would decide if and when she'd become a mother; she didn't intend to do it when she was twenty and change, and she sure as hell wasn't going to leave behind a trail of mini-me's to be raised by psychopaths. She burned that fucking embryo room down once, she could do it again.

At ten o'clock – to hell with military time – Max heard them bringing Alec around again, right on time. His scent triggered another round of salivating lust before they even reached the door, but the heat had died down enough that she was able to shove down the impulse to jump him. Instead, when the door creaked open, she charged out, knocking down and out the pathetic lone X4 in one fluid swing. Alec stood gaping at her, dumbfounded.

“But...” he managed to sputter, waving a strand of condoms at her. “Oh, come _on_! Now you choose to break for it?”

Max had approximately 4.3 seconds to deal with him before other X4s showed up from the noise. She shoved him into the wall, with the full intention of smothering him with her unwashed pheromones. “Your choice, flyboy. Either you come with me and help me bust out, or I kick your ass into this room and slam the door. Just to let you know, I'm still hopped up from the heat enough that one of these choices might have a reward at the end.”

Alec followed her down the hall.

It was almost too easy to steal the truck and blow through the gates, and head out towards forest that looked suspiciously like she was still in the Pacific Northwest. Manticore was obviously loosing its Gitmo touch outside of Psy-Ops and Reformatting. It was sobering, the fact that her fellow X5s probably could walk away at any time, but like overshocked lab rats they chose not to.

After breezing along miles of old obscure logging roads with heavy tree cover, she finally slowed down enough to grin at her partner in crime. Alec looked … uncharacteristically terrified. Max raised an eyebrow, because she'd pegged him as cool under pressure. The expression on his face, like some kind of brainwashing program had been triggered, made her wonder for the first time at what exactly had been done to her escaped unit's genetic twins.

“Oh my god,” he muttered. “I'm just like you oh-niners! They'll zap my brain until it dribbles out my ears if they catch me.”

“Yeah, I recommend not getting caught,” Max said nonchalantly. “Don't worry, we'll see Manticore again soon enough. Or at least I will, you can do what you want now.”

“Again...you...what?”

She looked Alec over: still shirtless, still toned and sleek and possessing amazing fingers, still with that beautiful face that even through his confusion was resetting itself and dealing with the situation. The overwhelming compulsion to fuck him was lessened and controllable, but not entirely gone. To her surprise, she didn't want it to be completely gone. Maybe Alec was right – recreation time with no earth-shattering Significance attached was totally enjoyable.

Max climbed over Alec's stunned form and straddled his hips, pulling the condoms from his pocket and tossing them onto the seat next to her in the process. His eyes fluttered down and he wrapped his arms around her, as if drinking in the familiarity for a brief moment before facing a brave new uncertain world.

“I'm going back and busting everyone out, whether they like it or not,” she told him. “Enough brain-frying, enough of Manticore's bullshit. You know that base better than I do, tag along if you feel like it.”

Max crooked her neck up and kissed him, slowly for once. As a person instead of an enthusiastic sex toy. Alec hesitated, maybe not knowing what to do with that, until she broke it off and eyed him expectantly.

“Oh, what the hell,” he said, and leaned in.


End file.
